


a land full of thieves and wonder

by glorious_spoon



Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-10
Updated: 2017-08-10
Packaged: 2018-12-13 17:18:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11764665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_spoon/pseuds/glorious_spoon
Summary: When they tumble into bed together the night before facing Bogue, neither Faraday nor Vasquez is really expecting to survive the next day.It complicates things, afterwards.





	a land full of thieves and wonder

**Author's Note:**

  * For [within_a_dream](https://archiveofourown.org/users/within_a_dream/gifts).



> Title from 'Coal Black Heaven' by Gill Landry.

When it happens, he’s drunk and so is Faraday, the whole world gone soft and blurry and warm. He’s never quite sure afterward which one of them makes the first move, but he remembers with vivid clarity the feel of his shoulders hitting the wooden slats, hot skin beneath his hands, the smell of sweat and the taste of cheap whiskey when Faraday licked into his mouth like a starving man at a feast.

He remembers Faraday’s hands in his hair, cupping his cheek, unexpectedly gentle. He remembers that he went to his knees without any urging at all.

It doesn’t matter. He knows how their chances map out; he knows that the odds of either of them seeing another nightfall are slim. Faraday, a gambler to the bone and smarter by far than he lets on, has to know that too. They’re both dead men walking. What they did tonight doesn’t matter, _can’t_ matter, and probably it’s better that way.

Afterward, they don't speak. He falls asleep with the room spinning, Faraday sprawled warm and naked and snoring on the narrow bed beside him.

He wakes the next morning sticky, hungover, and alone. Down in the common room, Faraday is alone at a table, washing his grits down with straight whiskey. He pauses when Vasquez walks into the room, but it’s just for a moment, and then he tilts his head and curls his mouth into a lazy smile. “Well, if it ain’t my very favorite Mexican, up with the sun. Want some breakfast? It’s just like Mama used to make, bland as hell and twice as stale. I do believe these good folks are trying to poison us.”

“I feel sorry for your mother, _güero_ ,” Vasquez says mildly, and sits. Faraday is still in yesterday’s clothes, though it looks like he made at least a cursory effort at washing up; his light hair curls damply at his temples, and his hands are clean. There’s a reddish mark just visible above the line of his collar. Vasquez remembers sucking it into damp, hot skin as Faraday shuddered and cursed beneath him—

He clears his throat and reaches for the whiskey. It’s not his usual habit, but right now, he needs it.

* * *

Dust and blood roil in the street, and Faraday is almost to the barn when the bullet catches him. He stumbles and falls and Vasquez can’t see any more than that, can’t think beyond the blood pounding in his ears; he’s diving out into the open street with two guns up, firing and spitting curses like he’s bulletproof.

The gunman falls back dead in a shattered coffin. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Faraday pull himself up and stumble for cover, and relief hits as sharp and painful as a stab in the gut.

There’s no time to think about it. There’s a Gatling gun, and the world exploding around them and no fucking _time._

* * *

There’s a Gatling gun, and Faraday’s horse thundering across the open plain toward it, and it’s both the bravest and the stupidest thing that Vasquez has ever seen a man do. Eight men on his tail, and even with Robicheaux and Rocks in the bell tower picking them off, there’s just no way—

He’s shouting encouragement, words that Faraday will neither hear nor understand, and his throat is raw and tight with something that feels almost like tears.

* * *

He’s the first one there. Afterward, when the fields are burning and the townspeople have emerged like frightened mice from their hidey-holes to drag the dead out of the streets, Vasquez swings up onto the nearest horse and doesn’t notice until he’s halfway across the field that it’s that black devil of a beast that follows Faraday around like a pup and snaps at everyone else who comes close. It’s cooperative enough under his hands and spurs, though. Maybe it’s just as upset over that stupid drunken Irish bastard as he is.

The grass is still burning, a widening circle of flame spreading out like ripples in a lake from the blackened center. Vasquez pays it no mind. The grass is still green this time of year, and there’s not much wind to speak of; it’s not likely the fire will spread much farther. Even if it does, he can’t quite bring himself to give a damn.

The Gatling is in pieces, scattered glittering across twenty square yards of earth. There are bodies, too, and part of bodies. Three of them are more or less intact, so mangled by the blast that it’s impossible to tell what they might have looked like in life.

Vasquez shoves a hand into his sweat-soaked hair, closes his eyes, swallows against an unexpected tightness in the back of his throat. Maybe he wasn’t quite admitting it to himself, but there was some callow part of himself that was hoping to find Faraday still breathing, still alive.

Callow and stupid. The bullets alone were enough to kill him, and now… well, now, the best he can hope for is to find enough for a decent burial.

The horse wickers softly, and Vasquez pats its neck. “ _Murió bien_ ,” he murmurs, and it’s true. It doesn’t help much, though. Death is death. He’s seen more than his share of it, but still, something about this one strikes harder than he expected. On some level, Faraday— trickster, liar, clever drunken card-sharp turned gunslinger— struck him like a man who might live forever.

He lets out a sigh and swings down off of the horse. As his feet land on the blackened grass, there’s a low noise to his left. A groan.

Something cold and sharp passes through him, raising the hair on the back of his neck despite the heat.

Another groan. The breeze lifts for a moment, and he can smell hot metal and cordite and smoke, all overlaid with the sharp copper tang of blood. It’s a lot like what he imagines Hell must smell like, and it’s all as familiar as his own heartbeat.

The noise is coming from his left, behind a scorched hillock of grass and upturned earth. A broad, flat piece of black iron that must have come from the Gatling’s carriage juts up at an angle, half-buried in the raw earth like something marking a grave. Behind it, a man is sprawled on his back, his face and hands and the front of his vest caked with blood and dust. He’s still moving— twitching, really, hands clenching and releasing spasmodically at the charred grass, booted feet kicking furrows in the earth. It takes Vasquez several moments to realize that he's actually trying to pull himself upright.

It’s Faraday. Of course it is. His guns still gleam at his hips, and there are bloody scraps of paper— playing cards— scattered in the roiled dirt beside him.

Vasquez is on his knees before he even knows what he’s doing, a strange panic thrumming in the back of his throat as his hands find Faraday’s bloody face, his chest, the tense, twitching muscles of his arms. He can’t even tell where he can touch the man without causing pain; every bit of exposed skin looks raw, and blood is seeping from half a dozen deeper wounds. Finally, he just cups Faraday’s face between his hands, leans in close enough to share breath, and says, “Hold on, _güerito._ You’re not allowed to die. Not now.”

Faraday’s eyes blink open, dazed slivers of green through his dusty lashes. “This ain’t quite the welcome I was expecting at the pearly gates,” he murmurs.

 _“Pinche cabrón._ That’s because you’re not dead.” Faraday’s eyes begin to drift shut, and Vasquez slaps his cheek. Gently at first, then harder when that produces no effect. “No, no. Stay with me.”

“Vasquez,” Faraday mumbles, the syllables slipping out lazy and sideways like he’s drunk and charming in a bar instead of bleeding out into the black earth, and then his eyes roll back in his head and he goes limp, and the feeling that goes through Vasquez at that is nothing short of pure panic, wild and disbelieving, like he’s never seen death before. Like he hasn’t dealt out enough of it with his own two hands.

“No, no, no,” he mutters, his hands skittering over Faraday’s mouth, his throat. “No, _por favor—_ ”

There’s a pulse there. It’s fluttering and weak, but it’s _there._

 _“Terco hijo de puta,”_ he mutters, sitting back on his heels, and he’s not even surprised that the curse comes out sounding like a prayer.

* * *

He doesn’t know what saint to thank for the fact that Faraday makes it to the surgeon’s table still breathing. Red Harvest helps him haul the limp, bloody body into the saloon, which is hot and reeking, chaotic with the sounds of dead and dying men. The doctor and a pair of grim-faced women are working frantically over a seeping gut wound, but it’s easy enough to tell from the gray cast of the man’s face that he’s already dead. Sure enough, Doc takes a step back, wiping sweat— or maybe tears— from his eyes with the filthy sleeve of his shirt.

“He’s gone,” he says wearily and jerks his chin toward the wall, which is already lined with corpses. The women have closed their staring eyes and covered their faces with handkerchiefs, but the air is still thick with flies. There’ll be work enough for the undertaker, and that’s for sure. “Who’s next?”

They lay Faraday down on the blood-soaked bar table that’s serving as an operating theater, and the doctor grunts and begins cutting off his shirt without a word. Vasquez swallows to see his chest laid bare, smeared with blood from at least three different bullet-holes, shockingly pale in contrast to his deeply tanned face and arms. He remembers that much from the night before—

Red Harvest’s hand is on his elbow, his grip implacable, dragging him back to give the doctor room to work. Some wild impulse in Vasquez wants to fight him— wants to fight _everything_ , tear the world to pieces— but he breathes out, forces himself to go.

* * *

“Is he going to live?” Chisolm asks, settling onto the edge of the porch next to Vasquez and passing him a flask. Vasquez takes it, drinks deep. It’s better whiskey than the rotgut he’s gotten used to lately, but he’s not exactly in a frame of mind to appreciate it.

“Maybe.”

Chisolm’s gaze is piercing, but he doesn’t push it, for once. “Robicheaux and Rocks didn’t make it. Horne, either.”

Vasquez nods. He saw the sheet-draped forms at the base of the church tower, helped Red Harvest lay out Horne, the Comanche’s bloody hands surprisingly gentle with the old bounty hunter, his hatchet and the arrows that killed him laid across his chest. “I know.”

“Be a goddamn miracle if Faraday pulls through. You know that, too, right?” Chisolm holds out a hand for the flask. Vasquez looks at it for a moment, then takes another long pull and hands it back.

“You’re not my priest, you know,” he says finally, and Chisolm’s smile is sharp as a knife.

“No, I don’t imagine I’d be much good at that.” He takes a drink, then hands the flask back to Vasquez and stands. “You want my advice, though, you’ll get out of town. Thing like this draws all kinds of attention, and that’s something a man in your position can’t afford.”

He’s right, of course, but Vasquez is thinking of the blood he still hasn’t scrubbed out from under his nails, and the taste of cordite lingering in the back of his throat, and the fact that he hasn’t stopped running in so long that he’s not even quite sure what month it is right now. He’s thinking of Faraday, sleeping off the morphine in a bed in Emma Cullen’s tiny house because the saloon is all shot to pieces, and he shakes his head. “No. Not yet.”

Chisolm sighs, sounding unsurprised. “Your funeral.”

He claps Vasquez on the shoulder and turns to make his way back toward the saloon, boots clacking lightly on the wooden slats. Vasquez watches him go, then looks back down in the flask in his hands.

After a moment, he twists the cap back on and pockets it. He’s not in the mood for drinking tonight, anyway.

* * *

Mrs. Cullen doesn’t look especially pleased to see him when he knocks on her front door, twisting his hat between his hands, but she doesn’t put a gun in his face, either, and that's a kinder welcome than he was expecting.

“Alright, I guess you’d better come in,” she sighs, and steps aside to let him pass. It’s cool and dim inside, the curtains drawn against the deepening night, a lantern guttering on the table. Faraday is laid out on a straw tick in front of the cold fireplace, eyes closed, bootless and stripped to his shirtsleeves. New shirt, from the look of it; it’s clean of blood and doesn’t quite fit him, unbuttoned enough to show the bandages spanning his ribs. His color is poor, but he’s still breathing.

“Is he—?” He stops. He’s not even quite sure what he means to ask.

“Doc says it’s too soon to tell,” Mrs. Cullen says. “Best thing for him now is rest, and he’ll live or die as the Lord wills it.” She sounds tired, almost indifferent, and there’s a part of him that wants to snap at her— to frighten her, to punch through that cool mask and make her snarl and glare like she did that first day at the cabin, if only to give the awful snarling thing in his chest some company—

He doesn’t do it. He has no delusions that he’s a good man, but he hasn’t quite fallen to the point of threatening a young widow in her own home for no good reason.

“Can I stay?” he asks, instead.

There’s no reason for her to say yes. It’s one thing for a woman alone to open her home to an invalid, but a healthy man, a stranger, an outlaw who threatened her at gunpoint the first time they met—that’s a different story altogether.

She looks him up and down with tired green eyes that seem to see more than he’s comfortable with, then looks back at Faraday, and finally nods.

“I suppose you might as well,” she says. “As long as you’re not expecting anything fancy. I haven’t got much to spare. If you run across the way to McCormack’s, I reckon they might have a straw tick to spare. And there’s a pump out behind the stables if you want to clean up.”

“Thank you,” Vasquez says, and looks away from her piercing gaze, the way it makes him feel flayed open and exposed. Looks over at Faraday, the softly curling hair falling across his forehead, his stubbled cheeks, his sock-clad feet poking out from under the thin coverlet, looking oddly vulnerable. 

Mrs. Cullen follows his gaze for a moment, and when she looks back at him her expression is impossible to read.

“I hope he lives,” she says, after a moment. “I do.”

Vasquez clears his throat and looks away. “So do I.”

* * *

It’s well past midnight, but even over the sound of the cicadas singing in the high grass he can hear carousing, whoops and hollers and the occasional _crack_ of gunfire. Mrs. Cullen’s house is on the outskirts of town, but it’s close enough that he could walk back to the saloon and drown his sorrows in the best whiskey this little town can offer.

Instead, he’s been sitting up next to Faraday, head leaned against the cool fireplace stone, listening to the slow, even sound of his breathing. One of his hands is dangling off the edge of the bed, just brushing Vasquez’s shoulder, and that single warm point of contact is the only thing he can focus on. He can’t get the memory of Faraday’s hands on him out of his head.

He knows it was just the whiskey and the wild energy that builds up before a battle, that it could easily have ended in fisticuffs instead of fucking— but he also knows what it’s like to hold Faraday’s face between his palms and kiss him slow and sweet, to feel those rough hands tangle in his hair, to hear his own name on Faraday’s lips, breathless with pleasure. It’s not something he could forget if he wanted to, and he doesn’t want to. Even if it is stupid and dangerous for a whole host of reasons that have nothing to do with the fact that it’s a man he’s thinking about like this.

There’s a sudden, louder _crack_ — louder than gunfire, like maybe some idiot tossed a barrel of black powder in the bonfire— and Faraday jerks awake, his hands flying up as if to shield his head. The movement is abortive, halted at the pull of bandages and stitched-together flesh, and he makes an awful, pained noise in the back of his throat, slumping back against the mattress, his eyes wide and dazed in the dim light.

“Shh, hush,” Vasquez murmurs, twisting to grip Faraday’s hand between both of his, pitching his voice as low and calm as he can with his own ears still ringing. “Be still. You’ll hurt yourself.”

For a moment, there’s only the harsh sound of both their breathing, and then Faraday says, hoarsely, “Pretty sure I already did that.”

“Idiot,” Vasquez says in a low voice. “You could have died. You _should_ have died. And for what?”

He can almost hear the shrug in Faraday’s voice, though the man doesn’t move. “Not like we didn’t all know this was a suicide mission.”

“You have a death wish, _güero?_ ”

A raspy noise that it takes him a moment to identify as a chuckle, and Faraday’s hand twitches in his grip, the fingers curling weakly around his. “You ever gonna tell me what that means?”

“Maybe someday. When I’m not angry with you.”

“Awful cold-hearted, holding a grudge against a dying man, don’t you think?”

“You’re not going to die _._ If you do, I’ll drag you out of Hell so I can kill you myself.”

Faraday laughs again, then coughs, a harsh barking noise that quakes his chest and probably hurts like hell, if the pained noise he swallows is anything to go by. There’s a bucket of water and a dipper near the table, and Vasquez fetches it, cups a hand under Faraday’s head to hold him steady as he drinks. The hair at the back of his neck is damp, his skin hot. He smells like strong soap and the bitter tang of laudanum.

“Thanks,” he rasps when he’s done, letting his head drop back against the thin pillow. Droplets of water gleam in his beard, and his eyes are on Vasquez, unnervingly alert for the amount of morphine he’s had. “Did you ride out after me, or was I hallucinating that?”

“I found you,” Vasquez admits. “After.”

The sharp edge of Faraday’s grin cuts the gloom. “Thought I remembered somebody cussing me out in Mexican.”

“You’re lucky that’s the worst I did. That was the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen a man do, _güero._ And I’ve seen men do some very stupid things.”

“Worked, didn’t it?” Faraday says. “Anyway, I think you were just worried about me.”

“ _Maldito bastardo._ Don’t try to think, it’s not your strong suit.”

“I’m right, ain’t I? You were worried.”

Vasquez sighs. “Maybe I was worried. Maybe I’ve seen enough good men die for stupid reasons. So?”

Faraday is still watching him. Slowly— cautiously, almost— he lifts a hand to brush his knuckles against Vasquez’s cheek. It's almost a caress.

“I’m not dead,” he says after a moment, quiet.

His hand is still on Vasquez’s cheek. Before he can think better of it, Vasquez turns, presses his lips to the inside of his wrist, to the taste of gunpowder still lingering on his skin. He can hear Faraday’s breath catch softly in the silence. “No. Try to keep it that way, eh?”

“Well,” Faraday says after a moment, “Alright, if you insist. On one condition.”

“What?” Vasquez asks warily.

Faraday’s fingers uncurl against his skin, rough and warm, to cup his cheek, then slide back to curl around the nape of his neck. It takes a moment for Vasquez to understand what he wants, to lean down until their faces are close. This close, even in the dim light, he can see the tiny flecks of abrasion across Faraday’s cheeks, the dust still caught in the creases of his skin. The air feels hot and still, as though the whole world is holding its breath.

“What,” he asks again, whisper-quiet.

Faraday lifts his head, tilts his chin, just enough to slot their mouths together. It’s soft and dry, barely even a kiss, nothing like the frantic, alcohol-fueled _need_ of the night before.

“On the condition that you stick around for awhile,” Faraday murmurs against his lips, and releases him. Vasquez sits back on his heels, his heart thudding. Faraday is just looking at him. He’s got a good deadpan, an inveterate gambler’s skill at keeping his thoughts off of his face, but it's too late; he's showed his hand and they both know it.

“I could,” Vasquez says, and clears his throat. “I could do that. If you want.”

"Well alright then," Faraday says. The grin that breaks across his face is broad, startlingly lovely, and this time when his hand finds Vasquez's cheek there's a tenderness to the gesture that Vasquez would never expected from him. "Good."

**Author's Note:**

> Spanish translations, aka What Is Vasquez Saying When He's Cussing Faraday Out:
> 
> Güero - Slang for a light-haired person; can be but is not necessarily derogatory in connotation. Vasquez uses it (more or less) affectionately.  
> Güerito - Diminutive of same.  
> Murió bien - He died well.  
> Pinche cabrón - Fucking asshole.  
> Por favor - Please.  
> Terco hijo de puta - Stubborn son of a bitch.  
> Maldito bastardo - Damn bastard.


End file.
